dare to love you (whatever skin you're in)
by Someone aka Me
Summary: Phoebe Black has never felt comfortable in her own skin. At least, not until she met Moira, who accepted her whatever skin she was in. Transgender!Phoebe. For my dear trash twins.


Assignment 11:Write about a character overcoming numerous obstacles to reach their goal. At least one obstacle should take inspiration from the four creatures listed in the lesson. (Gindylows, Red Caps, Hinkypunks, **Boggart** )

For my dear trash twins, from who've I've kidnapped many headcanons for this fic.

 _ **A note on pronouns:**_ While Phoebe is trans, this is being trans at a time where the language isn't prevalent like it is now. I don't think Phoebe would've even had the language to describe dysphoria, let alone want to change pronouns. So I've kept them female for this fic.

…

Phoebe stares into the mirror.

She hates what stares back.

Her hair is down her back, always shiny and clean and well cared for, because it is her Mother's pride and joy. Her mother still comes into her room in the morning and brushes her hair and tells her that she's beautiful.

Phoebe hates it.

She hates being her mother's perfect daughter. She feels uneasy in her skin, especially now, that her breasts and hips have begun to swell. Her mother says she is becoming a woman.

Phoebe isn't sure she wants to become a woman. She doesn't want her womanhood to come. She doesn't want to marry a man and bear his children, but it's more than that.

She doesn't want this life. It doesn't feel like hers. It feels like someone made a mistake.

She can't properly put it to words. But she can't deny that it's there.

Her mother pushes her door open without knocking. Phoebe turns to look at her.

Her mother smiles.

"Admiring your beauty, darling?"

Phoebe says nothing. Her mother takes it as a yes, sweeping into the room.

"Well, sit," she says. "I'll brush your hair."

Phoebe sits.

She blinks at her own face in the mirror. She's losing the childish cheeks she once had. Her face is narrower, sterner. It's the only change she doesn't mind as much.

"Mother?"

"Yes, darling?"

"Do you believe in love?"

Her mother laughs, lightly and delicately. "Oh, Phoebe. There's no such thing as love. It's a fantasy. Best to disabuse yourself of that notion now."

Phoebe sighs.

"Yes, Mother."

She stares at the face in the mirror and wonders if it will ever feel like hers.

…

Phoebe has always been her mother's favorite daughter. "Hesper," her mother says, "Is plain. Alexia, of course, is an abomination. But you, my darling Phoebe, you are everything a Black woman should be. Embrace it, for it is yours."

Phoebe never asked for any of it, though.

She never asked to be favoured or spoiled. She never asked for her mother's favour or her sisters' resulting disdain.

Phoebe only really wants to be left alone.

…

She smoothes out the purple fabric of the dress and wishes she could wear Eduardus' trousers, like she did when they were kids and her mother would never see them.

But now, it feels like she is always under her mother's watchful eyes.

She hates it. She longs for summer to end and Hogwarts to return.

She is fourteen years old. She is fourteen years old and on days she thinks she can get away with it she winds fabric tight around her breasts in an effort to keep them from growing any further. She steals her brother's shirts and trousers and wears them in the secrecy of her bedroom and hates replacing them with dresses.

She hates the sway of her hips and the curve of her waist and she hates the way men have begun to stare at her as she walks by.

She feels like a caged bird. Or maybe a seedling, just waiting for the rain showers to come so that she can sprout.

She doesn't care what metaphor. She just feels trapped.

…

She returns to Hogwarts for her fifth year. She turns sixteen.

She becomes a woman.

It is _terrifying_.

There is blood _everywhere_. She wants to scream. She wants to cry. She wants to curl up in bed and ride out the flames consuming her abdomen.

She wants to never tell anyone about this _ever_ , because when they learn that she is suitable for marriage, it will all be over.

She doesn't want to marry a man. She doesn't want to know what her body looks like swollen with someone else's child.

She wants to know freedom.

She wants to know sunshine on her bare arms and the smell of new blossoms in spring and the feeling of the grass in between her toes, without the dresses and the hair and the man waiting in the wings.

She wants to look at rainbows after the rainstorm and think, _the storm is over_ , instead of, _my storm has only just begun_.

But she is afraid.

She is afraid of her mother.

She is more afraid of her mother than she has ever been of anything else.

Her mother has never had anything but kind words for her, but she has seen from the way her mother interacts with Alexia and Hesper that her mother is capable of great rage.

And Phoebe knows that living her dreams would evoke that rage.

…

At first, she thinks she is so afraid of her mother's thunder and lightning that she will do what she must. She will live this life that has never felt like hers and she will marry the man her parents choose and she will grant him the children she must and she will watch the breasts she has always hated swell with milk to nourish a child she hopes she can love, for the sake of this child who doesn't deserve her apathy.

But then she meets Moira.

Moira, who is brave and strong and _beautiful_. Moira, who is grace personified, who wears dresses in beautiful colours like turquoise and emerald green and amber like they were made just for her. Moira, who is everything Phoebe didn't know she wanted.

Moira, who takes her hand by the lake and says, "I know I could be killed for this, and I know you might hate me for it, but I would dare to love you, if you let me."

Phoebe does not deserve Moira.

Moira says love is not about deserving.

Moira settles the screaming under Phoebe's skin and makes her feel more at home than she ever has.

It doesn't settle the itch, but it tamps it down.

…

One night, Phoebe lays on a couch in an abandoned room she stumbled upon while exploring, Moira in her arms.

In the darkness of the abandoned room, Phoebe feels bold.

"I hate my hair," she murmurs into the shadows.

Moira rubs a thumb along her arm. "Why don't you cut it?" she asks.

"My mother would kill me," Phoebe says, and she isn't sure it's an exaggeration.

"It's your hair, Phoebe," Moira says. "It's your life. You know that, right?"

And with Moira, Phoebe feels like she can take on the world.

More than that, she feels like she might be able to take on her mother.

…

She cuts her hair.

It falls to the floor in great, heavy locks. It feels like a funeral. It feels like a rebirth.

…

People stare. Eduardus looks at her like she's insane. Maybe she is. Maybe she doesn't care.

Moira's hands fist in her short hair as Moira kisses her deeply, and Phoebe thinks it was all worth it.

…

"I don't like dresses or skirts," she whispers to Moira, again in the safety of darkness. She knows Moira won't judge her, but it still feels safer this way.

"Then don't wear them," Moira says. Her words feel like a benediction, like a blessing.

Phoebe steals Eduardus' uniform.

She makes it to her first class before a professor makes her return to her dorm to change back. Somehow, it still feels like some sort of victory.

…

"I don't… I don't want to be my mother's daughter," she says to Moira. The shadows are especially deep tonight.

"Sometimes I don't think I'm a daughter at all," she whispers. "I don't know what I am."

"You're mine," says Moira. "And you're whatever you want to be."

Phoebe loves her more than she ever thought possible.

…

But eventually summer comes again, and she must walk away from Moira at the train station and she must face her worst fear. She must face her mother.

Her mother doesn't come to pick her up, which is how Phoebe knows she already knows. Her mother would not want to have this conversation in public. She wonders who sent the owl.

It doesn't matter.

She steps through the Floo.

Her mother screams.

"Phoebe, darling Phoebe, I didn't think it could be true! How could you do this?"

"It's my hair, Mother. It's my decision."

"How are we to marry you now? You look like a _man_!"

And somehow, that feels like the nicest thing she could've said.

"I'm going to change," she tells her mother. And she walks around her, going up the stairs to her room.

…

She comes down in a pair of soft trousers that Moira has bought her and a white button-up shirt Eduardus had given her, the look in his eyes soft and knowing. She loves her brother — he has always been the softest of them all, and she worries for him, but she also loves him for it.

Her mother screams again.

"Phoebe!"

"Yes, Mother?" Phoebe asks, innocence in her tone.

Her mother is not pleased. "How do you expect to get a man wearing _that_?"

"I don't dress like this to impress men. I dress like this because I want to."

Her mother clasps a hand over her mouth.

It takes a moment for her shock to fade, but when it does, it turns into the anger Phoebe was expecting.

"Change back into your dress right this moment, Phoebe."

Phoebe looks at her. Her terror is almost palpable, but then she thinks of Moira. Moira, who's soft eyes and firm voice have supported her through everything. Who will support her through this, whatever happens.

So Phoebe plants her feet firmly and says, "No."

It is the scariest thing she has ever done.

It is also the best.

Her mother screams. She yells. She threatens.

It is only when her own mother pulls her wand and starts throwing hexes that Phoebe knows this is over.

She knew her mother wouldn't understand, but she had hoped… she doesn't know what she had hoped.

Either way, she takes the hexes as her clue to leave. She summons her still packed suitcase, uses it to deflect a cutting curse, and walks out the door, immediately summoning the Knight Bus.

"If you leave this house, Phoebe Black, you are no daughter of mine!" her mother yells after her.

 _Good_ , Phoebe thinks viciously. _I never wanted to be._

* * *

Writing Month: 1714

Dragons: 1714

Days of the Year: Compliment Your Mirror Day: Write Lockhart/Mirror. Alt, write about someone dealing with their body image. [Bonus] / Summer Prompts: (dialogue) "There's no such thing as love. It's a fantasy." / Birthstones: Moonstone - (dialogue) "I don't dress like this to impress men. I dress like this because I want to." / Summer Colours: Amber / Element: (word) Flame / Shay's Musical Challenge: Dear Evan Hansen - write about covering up your true self. / Gryffindor Themed Prompts: Bold

World Cup: 17th June - Brazil vs **Switzerland** \- 19:00 - Character: Phoebe Black

Character App:1. (trait) Spoiled / Disney: S6: Fixer Upper - Write about someone trying to change someone they love. / Book Club:Scarlett:(colour) purple; (object) dress ; (word) clue / Showtime: 6. Sex Is In the Heel - (dialogue) "Embrace it." / Amber's Attic: 8. Face Paint: Write about someone hiding who they truly are. / Buttons: D (name) of course is an abomination / Lyric Alley: 13. Our bodies undressed the layers of shy / AAA: 1. #GetAnnaOnTwitter — Write about someone who doesn't follow trends. / Em's Emporium: P6: Lavender Brown/Parvati Patil: Write about a character coming out. Alt - Write about someone seem as ditzy. / Lo's Lowdown: Gaila — (colour) green.

Faerie Day: Spring Faerie; Sunshine; Spring; New; Blossom; Showers; Rainbows; Sprout; Seedlings; Thunder; Lightning

Film Festival: 37. Plot Point - Coming out

Debate: minor character: turquoise

Chocolate Frogs: 5. (Bronze): Burdock Muldoon: Write about prejudice or judgement.

Insane House: Action - Snuggling


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